Over 20 years after the first “Call of Duty” game, Microsoft’s Activision is still breaking new ground for the franchise. During the Xbox Games Showcase 2025, the company announced “Call of Duty: Black Ops 7.” Considering “Call of Duty: Black Ops 6” was released last fall, this will be the first time two installments have released back to back.
“Black Ops 7” is being developed by Treyarch and Raven Software. It is set in 2035, taking place four decades after the events in “Black Ops 6.” Milo Ventimiglia (“This is Us”), Kiernan Shipka (“Red One”), and “CoD” alumni Michael Rooker (“The Righteous Gemstones”) will provide their vocal talents and motion capture.
This newest installment is set in a world on the brink of chaos, having been ravaged by the violent conflicts after the events of “Black Ops 2” and “Black Ops 6.” Ventimiglia will play David Mason, the protagonist in “Black Ops 2.” Shipka will portray Emma Kagan, and Rooker is reprising his role as Mike Harper in “Black Ops 2.” Armed with cutting-edge tech, David and his team must fight back against a manipulative enemy who weaponizes fear.
The elephant in the room on this project is the current SAG-AFTRA strike against major video game publishers, including Activision. It has been confirmed that “Black Ops 7” is not a struck title. So Ventimiglia, Shipka, and Rooker are not in violation of the work stoppage.
Casting For “Black Ops 7”
When asked about casting Ventimiglia, Tyler Bahl, Activision marketing chief, said; he is “an iconic character from the franchise and one of the fan favorites.”
“And then we brought in Kiernan Shipka, which we’re super excited about and is red hot right now, to play this character called Emma Kagan,” Bahl told Variety. “It’s a new character, and she is a CEO of this organization called The Guild, and we think her performance will really blow people away. And then finally, Michael Rooker, is returning to the franchise reprising his role as Mike Harper from ‘Black Ops 2,’ and I think our fans, you know, will be excited to see him, you know, come back and return to the franchise, you know, because he hasn’t been here in a while.”
Despite the fanfare around the cast, don’t expect a whole lot of promotion leading up to the game’s release. “Usually at this point in time, we would have teased everything that’s coming out,” Bahl explains. “And I think in a lot of ways we’re setting this up more like a Beyonce album dropping; nobody’s going to know about it, or nobody’s going to see it coming. The whole goal was to really do something different, and for us to zag and show up in a unique way. And one way of doing that is almost not doing any pre-promotion and giving it to players in a really unexpected way.”
However, they aren’t totally reinventing the wheel either. Like the 6th game, this will also be a co-op campaign with round-based zombies.
“Black Ops 7” will be released on Xbox Series X and S, Xbox One, PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox PC, Battle.net, and Steam. You can check out the teaser trailer for the project below:
